WHERE NO MAN HAS TREKKED BEFORE
Captain's log, Stardate 12345…uh, point two. The Enterprise is en route to the edge of the galaxy, where we are going to boldly go where no man has gone before… except it seems someone has been this way before, as we've just picked up their automated distress signal. So we're boldly going where somebody went before and died, which doesn't sound nearly as brave or encouraging. Um… where was I going with this again?
"Captain, I would ask that you refrain from making log entries during our chess matches. It is most impolite.I have been waiting over forty-seven minutes for your move."
Oh, right; Spock still has a galactic stick up his ass. He thinks he can beat me at space chess; well, I'll show him.
"I assure you captain, I have nothing up my ass, as this is not a Tuesday. If you will be so kind as to make your move so I may smugly checkmate you."
James T. Kirk, captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, sighed and cradled his chin in his palm. Honestly, Spock could be such a drag sometimes. All his good sex stories were from almost seven years ago, he never laughed at Kirk's jokes, and he made a terrible wingman.
"Remind me why I hang out with you, Spock."
"Because I am the sole crewmember whom you have neither sexually harassed nor cuckolded, captain."
Spock had a point—in fact he had two points, both at the tips of his alien ears. His slanted eyebrows were probably aerodynamic from all the looking down his nose he did. Kirk scowled at him momentarily, and slapped a chess piece from one section of the multi-tiered chessboard to another.
"There. Checkmate."
"Captain, I do not believe that move was legal."
"Yes it was. Rooks can teleport."
"They cannot."
"Yes, they can. I just decided they can, and I'm the captain."
"While the leeway given a starship captain's judgment is considerable, I do not believe it extends to rewriting the rules of Three-Dimensional Chess."
"Why do they call it that? It's not really three-dimensional, there's just a surplus of boards. If it was real three-dimensional chess we'd be playing it with a cube or something."
Luckily, Mister Scott chose that moment to interrupt them. The intra-ship communicator whistled loudly and Kirk pounced on it; if he got called away on captain-y stuff, he could still claim victory in the chess game.
"Go ahead, Mister Scott."
"Ach, we comin' oop on tha manky wee neep wha' gies tha signal, cap'n."
"Understood, Mr. Scott." Technically that was a lie. Kirk hadn't understood a word, and Scots seemed to be the one dialect that was beyond the Universal Translator. He could make out the word signal, so that must mean they had reached the source of the transmission they had picked up. "We're on our way."
"Aye, dinnae ferget yer breeks!"
"Kirk out."
He made his way to the transporter room. Spock followed in his wake, doggedly pursuing the subject of chess moves.
"If rooks can teleport, then why did you not checkmate me sooner?"
"Rooks can only teleport when the king is in danger," Kirk quickly explained.
"Then the logical strategy would be to expose one's king early so as to enable one's rooks to begin moving rapidly about the board."
Fortunately they reached the transporter room before Spock could annoy him further. Montgomery Scott, their ship's Chief Engineer, stood ready behind the control board.
"What have we found, Mr. Scott?"
"Ach, is a wee thing cap'n. Nae big enaw tae be a ship, ur a lifeboat."
"Right… so you're saying it's small enough to be beamed aboard?"
"Och, reit enaw sairrr. Ah can hae it aboard reit awa'!"
"Sure. Um, energize."
Scott did his thing, and the transporters shimmered to life. Massive amounts of energy thrummed in the walls as a squat, corrugated canister on three legs materialized out of thin air.
"Oh my god," Kirk exclaimed, "someone left a pressure cooker in space!"
"Actually, captain," said the insufferable Mr. Spock, "it appears to be some sort of automated message buoy."
Its casing bore the name, barely visible amongst the pits and burn marks, of the lost ship that preceded Enterprise to this region of space: the S.S. Valkyrie.
"Jobby, 'at hin' is reit panned an' grottie!Whit ship 'at cam aff ay gain!"
"Look how damaged the buoy is," Kirk said. "The Valkyrie must have been destroyed."
"That's whit Ah jist said, ye divit!"
Suddenly, a large light began blinking on top. Kirk panicked.
"My god, it's doing a thing! Make it stop!"
Spock explained. "It is merely transmitting its contents, captain."
"Sounds like a good enough reason to put the entire ship on Red Alert. Red Alert, everybody!"
He left the transporter room and took a satisfied view of his ship's corridors. Red lights flashed, klaxons shrieked, and crewmembers began bustling up and down the passage trying to look busy. They never made eye contact, which Kirk found slightly odd. With Spock at his heels, he entered a turbolift bound for the bridge. Kirk caught sight of Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell hurrying towards them after they got inside.
"Oh god, don't let Gary Mitchell in here," he moaned. "That guy's an asshole. All full," he shouted at Gary.
"But there's only two of you," Gary said quizzically, skipping inside just as the doors slid closed. "Unless you wanted to be alone," he added meaningfully.
"No, no," Kirk replied, "the more the merrier."
"Today is not Tuesday," Spock added, as if that explained everything. Gary gave him a confused look, and then started bragging to Kirk about his latest sexual exploits. Kirk wanted to slug him. Gary always had the greatest sex stories, and the worst part was he usually had better ones than Kirk, although Kirk was convinced most of them were outright lies.
"I banged a Vulcan chick last week," Gary was saying.
Kirk shrugged, but Spock raised one eyebrow.
Gary noticed and said, "Er, no offense, Mr. Spock."
"None taken. Pon farr?"
"Jack Daniels. We had a three-way with this Andorian waitress. I have never seen anyone do that with antennae, let me tell you."
Kirk wanted to bang his head against the side of the turbolift. Let me out of here, he thought. As if in response to his silent plea, the doors slid open. He stepped out onto the bridge. Here he felt at home, amongst his loyal crew, while things went bweep and boopedy-boop. The chair helped, of course. It made him the center of attention and elevated him, both literally and figuratively, above the rest.
He noticed a pretty young blonde standing behind it, and smiled.
"Jones, is it?"
"My name is Smith, sir," she replied.
"Of course." Kirk beckoned her forward, and her pixie face brightened.
"Are you going to let me ride in the chair, sir?"
"No, I'm going to let you stand beside it. But if you're good, I'll give you a ride in it later." While I'm in it, he mentally added, and then hoped she wasn't a Betazoid. Plus, her new position would afford him a better view of her ass. She moved obediently forward and stood just in front of the chair and to the right, putting her within arm's reach of Mitchell. Kirk cursed himself for his short-sightedness. Mitchell had an unfortunate habit of grabbing whatever feminine accoutrements presented themselves, and blaming it on space turbulence.
Mitchell barely glanced at Smith as he announced they were nearing their destination. He throttled back on Kirk's orders, dropping the ship out of warp, and resumed staring sleepily at his controls as if he would rather be banging that Andorian waitress again. Kirk decided it was high time for an inspirational speech to the crew. He tried to make them daily, although on slow days it was admittedly trying. He could only say so many words about the new kind of space dust they had discovered, or crewmember birthdays.
"Mister Spock," Kirk said, shifting around in the chair until he found his ass-groove, "anything from that buoy?"
"Nothing yet, captain. My efforts are hampered because I must listen through what appears to be a 19th Century telephone."
Kirk rolled his eyes. Spock was always pestering him to upgrade, get some iPads or something, but it just wasn't in the operating budget. Not after the new uniforms, anyway. Miniskirts galore, no more of these damn baggy slacks all the crewwomen seemed to be wearing.
"Inter-craft address on," he commanded, because it was easier than finding the button for inter-craft communications. His armrests had more buttons than the ship had crew.
"Attention, crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise," he began, his voice reverberating throughout the ship. "We are about to probe the edge of our galaxy, in the region of space where the S.S. Valkyrie was destroyed so long ago. We have recovered their disaster buoy, and now we intend to boldly go—"
"Tapes are burned out," Spock suddenly shouted; "trying the memory banks."
Kirk glared at him for the interruption and continued.
"As I was saying: although it seems our trek across space has just begun, I ask you now to stand by as we boldly trek where no trek has ever—"
"Memory banks compromised," Spock shouted. "Checking the buoy's sound recorder."
Kirk's glare could have melted tritanium. "We are boldly—"
"I have something!"
"—Here we go," Kirk finished hastily, before Spock could shout at him again. He cut off the address and looked around the bridge. "Any questions?"
Several hands shot up.
"If we know the Valiant was destroyed, shouldn't we wait around to find out what happened before we boldly go anywhere?"
"Isn't the Milky Way a spiral galaxy? How can it have an edge?"
"What does the U.S.S. stand for?"
"Is that your real hair?"
Kirk opened his mouth to reprimand that last person, but the doors opened with a loud SWEESH behind him. He turned and saw Scotty and the various officers in charge of Enterprise's subdivisions walk onto the bridge.
"Aw section heids reportin' as ordered cap'n!"
"Lieutenant Sulu, head of astrosciences," said a young Asian man in a blue shirt.
Kirk nodded smartly at him and turned to Scotty.
"Ach, ye ken fa Ah be, ye bampot!"
The older man beside him started to speak. "Doctor Piper, chief medical off—"
"Yeah, nobody cares about you," Kirk interrupted. "Who is this lovely blonde?"
"I'm Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, head of psychiatry. It's my job to observe the crew's reactions to new phenomena."
"A psychiatrist? That's actually a good idea," Kirk conceded. "Mental health could be very important on a big metal box in deep space. I hope your position is permanent and Doctor What's-His-Face didn't bring you up here just because you're going to be important to the plot."
Dehner looked at her feet. "Well…"
"Damn it. Anything from the Valkyrie, Mister Spock?"
"It's all very garbled, captain."
Spock's impassive face showed what little trace of emotion he chose to permit. His mother may have been human, but he definitely took after his father's side. Spock was half Vulcan, and Vulcans as a whole chose to suppress emotion. Kirk couldn't help wondering if Spock's face stayed an expressionless mask even when he masturbated. Then again, Kirk frequently imagined what his crewmembers looked like when they masturbated. Someday someone would invent a holographic simulator room of some sort, and he would be able to find out firsthand. Until then he had to remain content with his imagination… and Tuesdays, of course.
"The Valkyrie was swept outside the galaxy by some kind of space wind," Spock went on. "They made it back inside, but their ship was badly damaged. Then the captain inexplicably began requesting all available information on ESP, and also the ancient Earth cultural narratives Bruce Almighty, Ghostbusters, Death Note, The Lord of the Rings, several back issues of DC Comics and one of the Spider-Man films."
"Which one?"
"The one with Topher Grace."
"My god. Whatever happened must have been bad."
"I concur, as the next portion of the recording seems to be the captain ordering the destruction of their own ship."
"Well, I wouldn't say Spider-Man 3 was that bad…"
"Recommend we hold position until we can determine precisely what led to the Valkyrie's destruction."
"Negative. Warp speed ahead, Mister Mitchell."
"Captain, are you certain this is the best course of action? We already know something terrible happened to the Valkyrie when they penetrated the galactic frontier."
"Heh heh, penetrated."
"It might be more prudent to—"
"Prudent nothing! Didn't you read the title of this episode? We are going to boldly trek where no man has trekked before if it kills me! Floor it, Gary!"
Gary floored it, which was such an out of place metaphor on a starship that it promptly suffocated to death. Spacecraft had no pedals to floor, and indeed most vehicles did not, in the 23rd Century. Nevertheless these idioms persisted, because the word "idiom" is one letter off from idiot.
Everyone watched the view screen anxiously. They should have named this series Stare Trek, Kirk thought. He felt an odd prickle on the back of his neck when he thought it, as if some being beyond his comprehension was glaring at him.
The vast starfield on the forward viewer resolved itself into a luminous pink wall of energy.
"See, Mister Spock? It can't be threatening; it's the colour of cotton candy."
"Sensor beam on," Spock yelled back.
"Why are you shouting all your lines, Spock?"
"To be heard above your ego, captain."
"What was that?"
"I said we are about to boldly go, captain."
Indeed they were boldly going. Enterprise hit the pink barrier at lightspeed and kept right on going. Gary reached awkwardly behind him, and grasped at Smitty or whatever her name was. Oh, he was only grabbing her hand. He continued to hold it, awkwardly, as the ship ploughed steadily through kilometres of stuff that looked like chewed-up bubble gum and, according to their sensors, might or might not be there at all. It was getting silly. What was she, the Designated Hand-Holder?
A control panel suddenly fountained sparks into the air. Great, now everything would smell like burnt wiring for a week. Kirk hoped they hadn't gone and installed those new computer components on his ship; the new stuff exploded at the slightest shock. Starfleet had tried putting some in a few months back and Scotty had yelled at them until they took it back out again. More sparks than Kirk thought possible spewed from the stricken controls, finally petering to a pathetic dribble. As if on cue, a keyboard on the opposite side of the bridge began spraying fresh sparks, like short-circuit tag team or something.
"Get us out of here, Gary," Kirk ordered. He'd had enough. Those things were a fire hazard. What was the point in having top-of-the-line computing power if the damn thing blew up in your face?
Enterprise began coming about, as more sparks began shooting out of more panels until the entire bridge looked like a Federation Day fireworks display gone haywire. It actually took Kirk a few moments to notice that sparks were shooting from Gary, as well. Pretty sure that isn't supposed to happen, he thought, as Gary collapsed.
Swearing loudly, Kirk rushed to take over the controls Mitchell had been operating with one hand since the other one was obviously needed to hold onto Smith in case she flew away or something. He steered the Enterprise out of the ominous candy-coloured energy field.
"Well, good thing nothing bad happened," he sighed once they were clear.
"Eight people are dead, captain."
"You win some, you lose some. Dr. Dehner, are you all right?"
"I seem to be fine," she replied, trying to smooth down her hair. It ignored her efforts and flew in all directions, held aloft by static electricity.
"Somebody check on Mitchell."
"I'm fine," Gary said, standing shakily to his feet. "I feel fine. I'm—what?" He looked around at the bridge crew. "What is it? What's everyone staring at?"
His eyes had…changed. They glowed from within with eldritch luminescence, shining like… well, like someone had slapped a bit of Mylar and tinfoil on his eyeballs.
—Δ—
Kirk entered sickbay some hours later, to check on his old friend. Doctor Piper met him at the door.
"He's in great condition," the doctor blathered. "In fact, I wish all my patients were—"
"Shut up, doctor," said Kirk, waving a hand.
"I was just leaving," mumbled Piper. After Kirk went past, he headed to the morgue and quietly shut himself in a drawer to wait for death.
"How are you doing, Gary?"
"Just fine, Jim. Better than fine, actually. I'm just doing some light reading."
"Oh, really?" Kirk had never known Gary to be one for literature. "Go Dog Go, perhaps? A little Seuss?"
"The internet."
"The whole internet?"
"Twice."
"Huh. So um, you feel any… different, good buddy?"
"Not really. Now let me tell you how your romance with the woman you nearly married was a coldly calculated plan by me to get better marks in the course you were teaching."
Several minutes later, Kirk stumbled back onto the bridge. "Mister Spock, anything new?"
"Yes, captain. I have discovered that Gary Mitchell has the highest ESP score of any crewmember aboard. It seems I have found the connection between our situation and the Valkyrie's. Some sort of psionic energy inherent to the barrier—"
"Wait, we're doing psionics now? I thought this was a core campaign."
Spock raised an eyebrow with mechanical precision. It was the closest thing he possessed to a tic. Kirk had learned to interpret it as confusion, or at least the nearest to confusion Spock would ever admit.
"Never mind, Spock. What does that have to do with the Valkyrie?"
"Clearly, the barrier caused a Valkyrie crewmember to develop extraordinary psychic abilities and delusions of godhood, forcing the captain to destroy the ship."
"That's a pretty big assumption, Spock."
"It is my opinion that we should kill Mister Mitchell now, while we still can."
Kirk sputtered, "Kill him? What the hell, Spock? He's just reading."
"I can hear you, you know," said Gary, from the screen showing live footage of his infirmary bed.
"Look, let's at least wait for Dr. Dehner's assessment," Kirk muttered, gingerly steering Spock away from the screen. "I'm sure she'll deliver a fair and objective analysis and not just flirt with him the entire time."
—Δ—
"I have to warn you," Elizabeth Dehner said, upon entering Gary's room, "I'm extremely attracted to powerful men, especially men with a lot of control over their bodies."
"Oh, really?" Mitchell smirked and looked at the biobed readouts, currently monitoring his blood pressure, heartbeat, neurological activity, and just about any other biological function the bed's designers could think of. The middle arrow, indicating heart rate, suddenly shot to the top of its designated space, putting Mitchell somewhere between mid-coital hamster and a racehorse on amphetamines.
"Pretty neat, eh doctor?"
"Oh sure," she said, sounding unimpressed. "You're just fiddling with the readout, or the sensor. Next you're probably going to tell me your heart skips a beat whenever I look your way."
"Do you want it to?" Mitchell grinned, an ordinarily affable expression made eerie by his unnatural eyes, and suddenly the heart rate indicator dropped. Mitchell dropped, too, collapsing back into his mattress as the arrow on the monitor struck zero.
"Perhaps I should have thought this through a bit better," were his final words.
—Δ—
Kirk wasted no time in summoning his top officers to the conference room, after Dehner reported what happened.
"And he came back a minute later?"
Dehner nodded in response to Kirk's question.
"Yes. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen."
Spock inclined his head. Ms. Dehner's behaviour was most illogical. From what he knew about humans, she should have been exhibiting the emotion known as "fear." Judging by her quickened breathing and dilated pupils, she was experiencing something entirely different.
"Jesus, Dehner, dial it back a bit," the captain ordered; evidently he had noticed it too. "You sound like you're sitting in a puddle. You should be sitting in a puddle, but it ought to be urine. Fear urine."
"Why are you all acting this way?" Dehner slapped a hand on the table. "Gary could be the next step towards a bold new future ruled by ESP!"
"Ach," the inimitable Mister Scott chimed in, "'at lassie's bin readin' tay mony X-Men comic books."
Lieutenant Kelso, the ship's navigator, raised a hand. "If I may offer a suggestion, we're approaching the dilithium mining facility on Delta Vega. It's completely automated, and the planet's uninhabited. Why not leave him there?"
"In a facility that processes starship fuel, with nothing but robots for company?" The captain shook his head. "What's to stop him from going all Dr. Manhattan and showing up at Earth in a massive starship he built with his mind, to enslave us with his robot army—actually, that sounds awesome."
Spock felt it time to contribute to the discussion. "Motion picture premises aside, captain, the prudent option remains the simplest."
"And what option is that, Mister Spock?"
"Shoot him in the face."
"I can still hear you," Garyshouted from the speaker mounted on the table.
"That's it," Kirk declared. "I'm putting an end to this, one way or the other."
—Δ—
"Gary, do you feel any… any deific urges? Any feelings of superiority towards your fellow human beings?"
Kirk drummed his fingers anxiously on the bed table as he waited for a response, but Mitchell barely glanced up from the copy of Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil he was reading.
"None whatsoever, Jim," he explained, his voice echoing throughout sickbay like God in a Cecil B DeMille film.
"Really? No inclination towards subjugation of inferior beings?"
"Nope," Gary said, finishing his book and picking up Mein Kampf.
"Well, I guess that settles that, then."
Spock entered. He held his hands behind his back in an uncharacteristic attitude of half-hearted subterfuge.
"I have brought something for Lieutenant Mitchell." His brought his hands into view. "A get-well card, which I believe is the traditional human offering at times like these, and a phaser."
Gary, who had been eyeing the Vulcan since he came in, finally broke his composure.
"Fuck you, Spock!"
He swung an arm forward, and lightning bolts sprung from his fingertips. Spock tumbled backwards across the room. Kirk looked like he was about to do something dramatic and captain-y, but caught a whiff of Spock's singed uniform and thought better of it.
He shouted, "Gary! I order you to stop going mad with power!"
"No," Dehner screamed from the doorway, "he's just misunderstood! He's reacting to your persecution of him!"
"You're both wrong," Gary snarled, struggling to rise from the bed. "These shiny contacts really fucking hurt!"
Thinking fast, Kirk desperately ran through possible courses of action in his mind. How the hell did you subdue a god? What kind of distraction would work? Some helpless humans to oppress? No, Gary already had a shipful of those, and it was best not to encourage him. So what then? A really big hammer? A mortal virgin? He glanced at Dehner. Hard to believe she could be a candidate, with a figure like that, it would depend on just how dedicated she was to her studies in college.
"Dr. Dehner, are you a virgin?"
"What?" She visibly recoiled, tearing her eyes away from Mitchell for the first time. "This is hardly the time or the place, captain. The status of my—"
"Captain," Spock coughed, slowly unfolding from the foetal position he had assumed on the floor, "if I may remind you of Starfleet sexual harassment policy, section XVII paragraph B—"
"Don't quote the goddamn regulations at me, Spock; I know them backwards and forwards. Need I remind you of your little pon farr incident on the sorority planet?"
"I do not see how that is relevant, captain, as I was off duty on the occasion you mention, and none of the young ladies pressed charges—"
"Hello?" Gary folded his arms. "Burgeoning demigod over here."
"—your mouth for once, Spock, the fate of the ship is at stake—"
"I mean, I'm a grown woman, of course I've—"
"—inappropriate dialogue between a captain and his or her crew, clearly outlined in subsection 12.2—"
"For fuck's sake," Gary boomed, interrupting them. "I can read minds. Dr. Dehner herself is unclear on the subject, owing to alcohol, although there is something…" His brow furrowed, lips moving as if he were reading from an unseen page. "A sad Friday night… neither you nor your roommate had dates… Jell-O shots… experimentation led to—"
Kirk realized he was holding his breath, but he never got to find out exactly what said experimentation led to because Dehner grabbed a hypo spray and jabbed it into Gary's neck. There came the tell-tale hiss, and Gary slumped over. The light quite literally went out in his eyes.
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Fascinating."
"Help me get him to the transporter, Spock," Kirk huffed, grasping one of Gary's arms.
"Should not this be Dr. Piper's job?"
"Fuck that guy. Bones would've cured Gary by now."
"A cure for godhood?"
"Yes! Grab his leg."
—Δ—
Drugs, thought Kirk; was there anything they could not accomplish?
With a minimum of grunting and puffing, he and Spock deposited Gary in a cell on Delta Vega's dilithium cracking premises. He ruminated on how remarkable it was that death couldn't keep Mitchell down, but slipping him a mickey did the trick.
After making sure the cell had a force field wrapped around it that could hopefully repel magical psychic lightning bolts, Kirk and his first officer met with Kelso.
"Here's that phaser rifle you requisitioned, captain," Kelso said, handing Kirk what looked like a hand vacuum optimized for cleaning cow vaginas.
"Phaser rifle? I didn't requisition any…" Kirk trailed off, staring at Spock.
"Do what you know you must, captain," Spock said. "Shoot him in the face."
"I CAN FUCKING HEAR YOU," said Gary, on the other side of the wall, "ASSHOLE!"
"Who's watching him?"
"Dr. Dehner volunteered for guard duty, captain."
"Is that really a good idea?" Kirk wondered.
He clapped a hand on Kelso's shoulder. "Listen, Kelso… if Gary gets loose, push the button that blows everything up, okay?"
"Sure thing, captain. Why does Starfleet put EXPLODE EVERYTHING buttons on everything they build, anyway? Somebody at the top of this organization has problems."
Kirk and Spock rushed into Gary's containment room, where Elizabeth had stopped just short of pressing herself against the force field.
"Dr. Dehner," the captain barked, "are you masturbating?"
"No I'm not! I…just had an itch, that's all."
"Alright. You'd better come back to the ship with us. We're leaving Young Zeus over there behind, and if he tries anything stupid, Kelso is going to blow this entire facility sky high."
Gary's head tilted again, in a manner he had adopted since attaining near-godhood. It looked like he was staring at something not in the room.
"Captain," Spock offered, "perhaps it would be wise not to discuss certain…arrangements in front of Lieutenant Mitchell?"
"Oh, come on, Spock, what's he going to do? Strangle Kelso with a conveniently placed electrical cable?" Shaking his head at Spock's absurdity, Kirk flipped his communicator open and called for Kelso. "Listen, Lieutenant, Mister Spock's getting his period over here, so just stay away from any cords or wires that look like they could be used to choke you to death, okay? Kelso? Kelso!"
"AWKKKKHRGHKHHHHGRRRGLE," Kelso replied.
"Well, shit."
"YOU SEE, CAPTAIN?" Gary was outside the cell now, his voice reverberating like THX surround sound. "THERE IS NOTHING I CANNOT DO."
"Really?" Kirk put his hands on his hips. "A limitless reservoir of divine power at your fingertips, and you off someone like a deleted scene in a Final Destination sequel? I'll say this, Gary, you've never had much imagination. That's probably why all your sex stories are so obviously fake."
"SHUT UP," Gary roared, eyes glowing brighter.
"Talk at me in all caps as much as you want, Gary. I bet there was no Andorian waitress."
"SHUT UP!" The air around Mitchell fairly crackled with energy, and produced a heat-shimmer above his head.
"You've been given all the power in the universe and what have you done with it? You're a fraud, Gary."
"NO YOU'RE A FRAUD! YOU'RE STUPID!"
Spittle flew from Mitchell's mouth. There was a flash, and a bang, and suddenly Kirk had vanished through a smoking hole in the rear wall. Spock reached for his pocket; he had a couple of Ambien in there, perhaps he could toss them into Gary's mouth while the demigod was yelling like a homophobic YouTube commenter.
"POWER," Gary screamed, calling forth 10,000 volts to envelop Mister Spock in a web of crackling, luminescent agony. "UNLIMITED POWER!"
As Spock crumpled to the floor, he saw Dehner gasp and blink rapidly as her eyes, too, began to shine from within like Mitchell's. He tried to gather his thoughts, call upon his reserves of Vulcan control, but the pain was simply too much.
"FAGGOT," Gary snorted, kicking Spock aside and leading Elizabeth from the room.
—Δ—
Spock was 67% certain the tips of his ears had melted in the electrical barrage. He was just beginning to regain enough feeling in his lower body to ascertain whether he had soiled himself when Kirk stepped through the hole made in the wall by his rapid egress at Gary Mitchell's hand.
"Captain. How did you survive?"
"The power of top billing," Kirk cryptically replied. "Where's that phaser rifle? It's time to take your advice Mister Spock."
"Your timing could not be less fortunate, captain. We face two adversaries now, whereas before there were only one."
"I suppose it was foreshadowing when Dr. Dehner mentioned her unusually high ESP quotient earlier."
"Did she, captain? I do not recall."
"Oh, I guess we skipped that part. Whatever. I'm here to kick ass and chew scenery," Kirk said, and, glancing at the destroyed cell, added, "and I'm all out of scenery."
"Wait, captain. One man, even armed, against a budding deity? It is not logical. The most logical course of action would be to send several dozen members of the crew, each equipped with similar weaponry. It would greatly increase our chances of success."
"No, Spock. It's more climactic this way."
"Then at least permit me to go. My superior Vulcan strength and stamina would—"
"Negative, Mister Spock. I'm captain, and the captain always gets the big showdown at the end. Your job is to go back to Enterprise and, if you don't hear from me by 2300 hours, nuke this place from orbit."
"Or I could simply target Mitchell's location with the vast amount of advanced firepower Enterprise has to offer. Surely it would be at least as, if not more, effective than a single rifle."
"Damn it, Spock, let me have this!"
"Aye, captain."
—Δ—
Shouldering his rifle, Kirk picked his way through the rocky terrain of Delta Vega. He was about half a mile from the station, by his reckoning. At first he worried he would be unable to track Mitchell and Dehner, but soon he discovered he could just follow the echoes from Gary's god-voice. You could hear that shit for miles.
After five more minutes of travel, he came across a large sign fabricated from nothing. It read, "WELCOME TO MITCHELLOPOLIS, POPULATION: TWO." Kirk shook his head and soldiered on, past several bas-reliefs of Gary carved from the surrounding rock. As he passed them, he began noticing a trend: each statue became more muscular and well-endowed until the point someone could have comfortably parked a shuttlecraft on each of Gary's biceps and deflected passing asteroids with his dick. Dicks were a prominent part of the landscape as well, Kirk noticed; it seemed Gary had been unable to pass a promontory or outcropping without rendering it phallic, or even more phallic. There were a few crudely rendered pairs of breasts as well, and badly-spelled missives labelling Kirk a "faggot" and calling his penis size into question.
He nearly dropped his rifle when he saw the dead woman. On closer inspection he discovered, to his lasting relief, it was not a corpse; to his continued disquiet, however, he discovered it was some kind of construct, or doll. Created for Mitchell's amusement, perhaps. What did Dehner think of all this?
He got the chance to ask her when she strolled casually out from behind a twelve-foot erection made of rock.
"Hello, Kirk. How are things?"
"Dehner! Where's Gary?"
"Back there," she gestured, "trying to grow a penis-shaped flower. He kept screaming, TITS OR GET THE FUCK OUT! So I left."
"Dehner, can't you see what's happening? He's only going to get worse! Look at the atrocities humanity became capable of when granted the anonymity of the Internet. Godlike abilities are only going to amplify that!"
"He's not bad. Nobody understands him."
"Dehner, you're a psychologist. Haven't you heard of Stockholm Syndrome?"
"HEY ASSHOLE."
Kirk whirled around and fired. The beam from his rifle hit Gary and just… scattered, like a garden hose sprayed at a window. Gary laughed derisively and twitched one hand, sending the phaser fifty feet away.
"HA! WHAT KIND OF GRIP IS THAT? GAY!"
"Gary, stop this," Kirk pleaded. "It isn't who you are!"
"BET YOU COULD'VE HELD ONTO THAT RIFLE IF IT WAS MADE OF COCK, AM I RIGHT?"
"C'mon, Gary! You never used to talk like this." He glanced at Elizabeth for help, but she was doing the faraway-shiny-eye-stare. Probably distracted by electrons dancing in their orbits or some shit.
"KNEEL BEFORE GOD!"
An irresistible weight hit Kirk's shoulders, forcing him to his knees.
"HA HA. YOU PROBABLY KNEEL ALL THE TIME. BECAUSE YOU'RE GAY!"
Kirk's hands moved, against his will, compelled by an unseen force, and began slapping him in the face.
"STOP HITTING YOURSELF. STOP HITTING YOURSELF, KIRK! WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF?"
"G-Gary," Kirk gasped in between slaps, "stop!"
"NO YOU!"
The massive weight disappeared, and Kirk toppled backwards from the sudden lack of it. Gary sneered arrogantly and waved one hand, causing a neatly carved rectangular hole to appear in the ground.
"THAT'S GONNA BE YOUR GRAVE, FAGGOT!"
Another wave caused a tombstone to appear at the impromptu grave's head. It bore the name "JAMES R. KIRK" and a brief epitaph: "HE LIKED IT UP THE ASS."
"Gary, you moron," Kirk snapped, regaining his strength, "you misspelled my middle name!"
"THE R STANDS FOR 'RETARD'! HA!"
Gary grasped a basketball-sized rock as if it were a pebble, and hefted it above his head.
"NOW YOU'RE GONNA DIE, FAGGOT!"
"A rock, Gary? Omnipotence is in your grasp, and you use a rock?"
"WOULD YOU PREFER I FILL YOUR LARGE INTESTINE WITH BOILING ACID, GAYWAD?"
"No, a rock is fine."
Gary laughed and raised his rock. Then, he seemed to notice Elizabeth for the first time.
"SHOWS US YOUR TITS," he commanded, and gestured casually towards her. Her uniform shirt stretched taut over her chest before the material gave way, fibres shredding and scattering across the rocks. Underneath, her brassiere began writhing like an eel out of water, but she clamped a hand on it. Her eyes flashed, and the undergarment's movement stopped.
"You asshole!"
One slender hand reached out towards Gary, and the fabric of his uniform pants contracted around his groin. He screamed in the high soprano register and pressed his knees together.
"YOU'RE A BITCH!"
The stones surrounding Dehner shattered like glass. She had both hands up now; the earth split beneath her feet, and the shattered rocks melted into magma that flowed beneath her. The air between her and Gary fluoresced, growing brighter and brighter until Kirk could no longer look directly at it. For a moment, he was absolutely sure he saw a miniature star floating there, crackling with lightning. Then the rumbling stopped and the light went out. Gravel began dropping to earth all around Kirk, and he realized belatedly that it had been floating during Mitchell and Dehner's little spat. The ground was still sizzling.
"Wow," he muttered, "wouldn't it have been anticlimactic if they just awkwardly waved their hands at each other for a few seconds?"
Gary was blinking rapidly and opening and shutting his mouth, like a dog with peanut butter stuck in its teeth. His eyes looked normal.
"I knocked his contacts out," Elizabeth explained from her prone position on the ground. "You haven't got much time."
Nodding grimly, Kirk got to his feet and strode purposefully towards Gary, who was anxiously scanning the ground.
"Well, a point-blank phaser rifle blast didn't work, so how about PUNCHES TO THE DICK?"
Kirk made good on his threat, falling on Gary in a flurry of blows that made the would-be god yelp in pain. He pummelled Mitchell across the mesa, oblivious to their surroundings until they both tumbled headfirst into the makeshift grave.
"Hey," crowed Gary, "my contact lenses!"
"Oh shit," mumbled Kirk, scrambling out of the hole.
"THAT'S RIGHT KIRK," Gary boomed, his eyes back to their unnatural silver sheen, "WHILE YOU WASTED YOUR TIME PUNCHING ME, I HAVE REGAINED MY ALMIGHTY POWERS! NOW I AM GOING TO SHOVE THIS ROCK SO FAR UP YOUR ASS YOU'LL SNEEZE GRAVEL!"
"Wait," called Kirk. Mitchell's mind had clamped around him once again, holding him immobile and helpless. He was forced to face the godling, standing defiantly in Kirk's grave.
"Wait," he said again. "If you're omnipotent, can you make a rock even you can't pick up?"
"PFFFF! OF COURSE I CAN, DUMBASS!"
Gary snapped his fingers, and an enormous boulder appeared above him. "SEE? THERE IS NOTHING I CANNOT DO! EXCEPT, OF COURSE, HOLD UP THIS ROCK WHICH IS OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT…"
As advertised, not even Gary Mitchell could keep the rock of his own making aloft. It crashed down with a resounding BOOM over the open grave, slamming shut like… like a rock on a Jewish Messiah's tomb? No, hopefully this guy wouldn't be coming back in three days, Kirk thought, but best to get the hell out of there, just in case.
"Do you… think he'll survive?" Elizabeth lied on her stomach, the mercurial brilliance in her eyeballs fading away.
"Oh yeah," Kirk flippantly told her. "Sure, he survived rifle shots to the face, enough sedatives to drop fifty Klingons, and death itself, but a big rock falling on him will stop him for sure. Definitely."
"I don't think I'm going to make it either," she panted.
"What? Dr. Dehner, we hardly knew ye!"
"Yes, well, I'm afraid the effort of exerting the exact same amount of power as Gary has exhausted my poor, fragile, feminine body."
Kirk crouched down and placed a companionable hand on the small of her back.
"At least Gary died doing what he loved: showing off."
"…" Dehner replied, because she was dead.
"Oh well," the captain sighed, pulling out his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise: one to beam up."
"Captain, this is Spock. I assume you were successful in subduing Mister Mitchell."
"You don't know the half of it. Beam me up, already."
He felt the transporter take hold even before he could see the shimmering effect. Delta Vega's surface dissolved into the transporter room.
"Yoo're lucky ye didn't die, glaikit!"
"Ah yes, thank you, Mister Scott."
Kirk stood up and began brushing the planet's dust from his pants. Spock entered the transporter room, looking as unconcerned as ever.
"Did you shoot him in the face, captain?"
"No, I ended up dropping something heavy on him. Boy, I hope I don't die like that. That would suck. And it would be ironic. I hate irony."
"Indeed. Course heading, captain?"
They stepped through the doors onto the bridge, which was beeping and whistling as usual.
"Best speed to Starbase 89, Mister… oh, right. Both our navigator and helmsman are dead. Get Mr. Sulu up here, he seems like a bright fellow."
"With all due respect, captain, he is a botanist."
"Ah, he'll figure it out."
"Now that we know what happened to the Valkyrie, captain, I am sure that Starfleet will wish to study this intriguing phenomenon."
"Nah, we'll never mention it again. Although they'll probably put up some kind of sign warning people. That ought to keep away every power-hungry nut seeking godhood."
"One thing still disturbs me, captain," Spock continued, as Kirk took a seat in his chair. "If the Valkyrie was here before us, then our episode title is technically incorrect. We did not, in fact, go where no man has gone before."
"Oh, we still did that, Spock." Jim Kirk was smiling conspiratorially as stars streamlined across the Enterprise's main viewer during the jump to warp speed.
"What do you mean, captain?"
"The Valkyrie was crewed entirely by women."
KIRK AND THE CREW OF THE ENTERPRISE WILL RETURN IN:
CHARLIE SEX